You can’t with any seriousness be saying that Barak Obama’s political skills are so stellar, so magnificent, so vertiginous as to be compared to the beauty of Brad Pitt or the intellect of Stephen Hawking.

Obama thinks of himself as an epoch making president, like Reagan or FDR. Being the first African-American president gives no small credence to that line of thinking.

If they do read the Professional Left as much as it appears; President Obama may fear that he is cut more from the cloth of Herbert Hoover than Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which destroys the delusion that he is an epoch making president.

Stephen Harper could not win a primary in the US; He could not pass the Tea Party litmus test. He is an evangelical Christian, but Canadian evangelicals are more muted than their American cousins.

While he has rabid Members of Parliament that want to end same sex marriage and abortion rights, he knows that he can not enact such legislation. Canadians do not like extremists; we are too nice as a people, and he likes being Prime Minister too much.

He is an authoritarian. He runs his own political party with an iron fist. Now that Canadians have let him off of his leash; he will muck it up bad. He has had a problem with scandals over the last year. Many more will follow now that they have a majority government.

The NDPs surge is very, very good news. Quebecers are very social democratic in their outlook. And a large number of Quebec’s seats went to the NDP.

The NDP is a real social democratic party. They are the heirs to the Canadian Commonwealth Federation, the party that enacted the first universal health insurance program in the province of Saskatchewan IN 1946. (BTW, the CCF was a fiscally conservative party; no one would lend that Red Menace money.)

Until this decade NDP success has been almost solely limited to the western provinces of British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. They won one in Ontario in 1990. There has been a recent win in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia in 2009.

Historically, the Liberals had a stranglehold on Quebec and were able to form majority government after majority government because of that base. If the NDP can solidify their presence in Quebec; the future looks very good for Canada.

I, too, am one of the lurkers. On other sites I comment a lot. Here I read and learn. This is one of the few sites that I read every day. You people impress me. You think big thoughts and dream big dreams.

I found this site because of Jane being a guest on Countdown. Damn, I miss Keith.

Indeed, we use paper ballots here in Canada. They work just fine. Oddly, we don’t think that ballot counting is a for-profit enterprise.

Furthermore, on more than one occasion I have showed up at the polling station without my enumeration card. I sign an affidavit saying that I live in the riding (electoral district); they check my driver’s license, and then I vote.

Your voting “procedures” you have to contend with are meant to disenfranchise. Period.

I completely hear you, but here is my alternative explanation. Obama loves ideas. He loves to discuss them. He is very good at listening to the opponent’s point of view.

He is, in fact, so good at listening to their point of view that he actually understands their point of view. This result, however, makes you more sympathetic to the opponent’s point of view. (Besides he wouldn’t even call the others in the debate opponents.)

I understand this process having studied philosophy for far too long. (Besides the others in the debate are not opponents; they are collaborators in the search for understanding.)

This process is laudable and good in the search for understanding. And if the political discourse could be bent to this kind of discussion, Obama would be correct in thinking part of the political mess is the wars of words.

The problem is that Obama is full of hubris. He thinks he can transform the political narrative. He seems to have his sights squarely set on his place in history as a transformational president, that he will save Washington from itself, or usher in world peace, or solve the Middle East situation, or, or……

He flatly refuses to stop looking at the political arena or should I say Coliseum as if it were a moot court or debate held by the Debating Society.

He refuses to see Republicans as they are: They think he is the bloody Anti-Christ, not-a-hyperbole-not-a-metaphor, but the end of the bleeding world, Anti-Christ. All the birth-certificate, socialist, fascist name calling is just a dog whistle for this belief. They will not negotiate with him. No true Christian would give any quarter to the Anti-Christ.

He can’t seem to get out of some academic mode of operation. When the neighbourhood bully is trying to take your little brother’s lunch money from him, you don’t negotiate with the bully. You give him a black eye. And you don’t care if the bully might win, because defending your little brother is what you do.

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